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American Morning
Kodak Will Layoff up to 20 Percent of Workforce
Aired January 22, 2004 - 07:26 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, the grim picture over at Kodak and a toy story with an unhappy ending this morning.
Andy Serwer is minding your business.
Kind of a bummer of news from the business front this morning.
ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Yes, a little bit of that, especially for the people in Rochester, New York, home of Kodak, big yellow, as they call it up there, always a bedrock of that particular community. A lot of layoffs coming, though, apparently. Kodak announcing it will be laying off up to 20 percent of its workforce. That's 15,000 jobs.
Of course, it's dominated this film business for over 100 years and in Rochester, 60,000 people used to work at this company. It's now down to 20,000 people. And, you know, you guys, growing up, of course, there was only Kodak film when we were kids. Then you have Fuji coming into the picture and now, of course, digital photography. This is a company in decline and they're struggling to get back on different fronts with imaging and that sort of thing.
But it's really very tough sledding for them.
O'BRIEN: And then you have the bad news from KB Toys.
SERWER: I'm full of bad news today.
O'BRIEN: I know it.
SERWER: I'm sorry.
O'BRIEN: Thanks.
SERWER: We'll get some good news, too.
OK, KB Toys, we've talked them going into bankruptcy. A lot of times companies continue to operate while they're bankrupt. In this case, though, they're going to be closing down a lot of stores. Five hundred out of 1,200 stores are going to be shutting down. They're going to be selling their merchandise, get this, Bill Hemmer, $0.47 on the retail dollar, all those toys, which is actually not the great if you're -- if another company is buying, because that's probably about the wholesale price.
O'BRIEN: Right. SERWER: So some other company is going to be coming in and buying them. So, again, Target, Wal-Mart, big in this business, hurting the toy retailers.
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Aired January 22, 2004 - 07:26 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, the grim picture over at Kodak and a toy story with an unhappy ending this morning.
Andy Serwer is minding your business.
Kind of a bummer of news from the business front this morning.
ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Yes, a little bit of that, especially for the people in Rochester, New York, home of Kodak, big yellow, as they call it up there, always a bedrock of that particular community. A lot of layoffs coming, though, apparently. Kodak announcing it will be laying off up to 20 percent of its workforce. That's 15,000 jobs.
Of course, it's dominated this film business for over 100 years and in Rochester, 60,000 people used to work at this company. It's now down to 20,000 people. And, you know, you guys, growing up, of course, there was only Kodak film when we were kids. Then you have Fuji coming into the picture and now, of course, digital photography. This is a company in decline and they're struggling to get back on different fronts with imaging and that sort of thing.
But it's really very tough sledding for them.
O'BRIEN: And then you have the bad news from KB Toys.
SERWER: I'm full of bad news today.
O'BRIEN: I know it.
SERWER: I'm sorry.
O'BRIEN: Thanks.
SERWER: We'll get some good news, too.
OK, KB Toys, we've talked them going into bankruptcy. A lot of times companies continue to operate while they're bankrupt. In this case, though, they're going to be closing down a lot of stores. Five hundred out of 1,200 stores are going to be shutting down. They're going to be selling their merchandise, get this, Bill Hemmer, $0.47 on the retail dollar, all those toys, which is actually not the great if you're -- if another company is buying, because that's probably about the wholesale price.
O'BRIEN: Right. SERWER: So some other company is going to be coming in and buying them. So, again, Target, Wal-Mart, big in this business, hurting the toy retailers.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
